Main menu

Struggling McLaren off the pace in Australia

Jenson Button particularly happy with the way his McLaren was running in practice for the Australian Grand Prix. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

McLaren’s 2013 Formula One season got off to a disastrous start in Australia as the car proved to be a handful to drive and well off the front running pace.

The team concedes that the MP4-28 has some fundamental problems, notably with ride quality. Jenson Button was some 2.3 seconds off Sebastian Vettel’s fastest time in 11th place, while teammate Sergio Perez was over 0.2 second slower in 13th.

“It’s going to be a long night; we’ve got to find a way [to get] the car working,” said Button.

“I think a racing driver will always say they want more grip, they want more downforce, it’s always the way. There are a few other issues that we need to solve before we start worrying about that, and one of them is definitely ride.

“It’s something we’ve been struggling with today, the front and rear of the car. We’ve been working with a lot today to try and improve it; we haven’t found something that’s helped yet.

“The ride is so important with an F1 car, if the car is moving around a lot, the downforce is not necessarily working in the correct manner. We’ve got to get the ride sorted.

“I don’t think [my expectations] were massively high coming here. After testing the car in Barcelona, I felt we had a reasonable setup, but there was a big gap to the front guys in terms of lap time. I think we can see that gap today; it’s probably a little bit better than what we expected, but I don’t think we’ve done the best job yet.”

Button admitted that getting a reasonable helping of points would be a bonus.

“The way things have gone today, I think points will be very positive. When things aren’t going your way, it’s important to get the best out of what you have. At the moment that’s what it feels like, but we have just got out of the car. There’s a lot of work to do tonight.

“It’s always tough for a racing driver, you’re always emotional when you step out of the racing car. But tomorrow morning I’ll be a lot more sprightly after going through the data and hopefully finding something.

“We’ve got to go through the data and make sure the car is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and make sure the setup is where we think the setup is.”

He also made an intriguing admission about the car’s pace on Day One of testing in Jerez.

“We had a setup we didn’t think we had. It wasn’t one we could work with.”